Bulgarian golden filigrane pendants with bird figures: to the question of origin

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of gold filigree pendants with a miniature figure of a bird from the Volga Bulgaria. There are not many of them. In total, sixteen such artifacts are kept in museums of the Russian Federation and in private collections of pendants with a bird figurine. If we take into account similar filigree pendants, but without the figure of a bird, the total number of them reaches 25 copies. These pendants of the 11th-12th centuries are dated. The author believes that they began to be produced in the second third quarter of the 11th century in one of the jewelry manufactory in Volga Bulgaria.

Analysis of the technology and design of these pendants led the author to the conclusion that most of the constructive elements, including the bird figurine, were borrowed from jewelery from the Middle East, primarily from Iran and Syria. This made it possible to hypothesize that this production in the Volga Bulgaria was organized or headed by a jeweler from the Middle East. With this region is connected and a figure of a bird in a suspension bracket. This is one of the symbols in Iranian art, which was reflected in other Iranian products where a bird was depicted, for example, on ceramic and some metal bowls. The obvious connection between the filigree gold pendants and other similar products of the Bulgarian jewelers was not revealed. The author believes that these pendants are of Bulgarian origin. These pendants are of Bulgarian origin made in the artistic traditions of j ewelry of the Middle East of the 10th-11th centuries.